Bite Me

Tatiana was stretching her wings when the door to her office was flung open. A male fairy hurried in and slammed the door behind him.

“Oberon,” Tatiana said. “What’s wrong?”

“We have a problem.”

“A problem? What kind of problem?” Tatiana looked towards her desk. Both her in-trays were piled high. The one on the left was overflowing with harvest reports, payment requests and expense accounts. The right tray was less full, but the research papers and future modelling diagrams would take hours to read. She didn’t have time for problems.

“They’re on strike,” Oberon said.

“What?” Tatiana’s gaze shot back to the other fairy, paperwork forgotten for the moment.

“Fairy Resources, too?” Tatiana’s shoulders slumped further. She’d heard rumblings through the grapevine that the staff of Tooth Inc were unhappy, but this was unthinkable. Tooth Fairies didn’t go on strike, they just did their jobs. “Why?” she asked.

Oberon shrugged. “Pay. Conditions. The usual.” He shook his head in dismay. “What are we going to do, Tatty?”

She shook her head. “No, we don’t. We’ll go back to the way things used to be. You and me. Maybe Magnus and Alberich will come back. It’ll be just like old times.”

Oberon put his hand on her shoulder, but didn’t say anything. It was a sentiment he’d heard from her many times.

Tatiana turned her back when she saw the sympathy on his face. She’d never wanted the CEO position. She was a field agent back when being a Tooth Fairy meant something. Back when Tooth Fairies wore the badge with pride. They’d harvested teeth by day and soaked up the adulation by night, never having to pay for their cups of hot clover. Now she sat behind a desk, day after day, and Tooth Fairies barely earned minimum wage.

Oberon said, “Maybe a small payrise would help.”

“There’s no money,” she said, turning to face him again.

To Oberon’s credit, he didn’t question the truth of her statement. He just asked, “Why not?”

Tatiana looked back over at the heaped paperwork on her desk. “Expenses. Wages. Everything.”

She sighed and ticked off the points on her fingers as she said, “We’re understaffed in every department. The Converter Bins are full, and Conversion need at least another seven bins to keep up with supply. We’ve had to hire more fairies for the Teleport Circles. R&D are understaffed, and can’t develop better solutions. And every day, we need more collectors.

“Plus, the price of teeth just keeps going up.” She laughed sadly. “Remember when we could buy a tooth for a coin or two? Sometimes the humans were happy for us just to take them, no payment required. But now…” She shook her head.

Oberon nodded. “So we cut back a bit,” he said. “Maybe we could withdraw from Europe. Or South America.”

“No,” Tatiana said. “We need—”

The door was flung open a second time, and a short, black-winged fairy wearing heavy boots and a surly expression stomped into the office.

“Aubrey?” Tatiana said in surprise. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in engineering?”

Oberon stepped forward, trying to put himself between Aubrey and Tatiana. “We’ve got it under control,” he said.

“Huh! I’ll believe that when I see it.” Aubrey waved a dismissive hand at Oberon and then looked back at Tatiana. “I warned you, Tatty. I told you the Circles were a bad idea. ‘Build more Converter Bins,’ I said. ‘The humans will need more oil,’ I said. But no. Instead, you set up Circles to teleport teeth into the fucking sun. And now we’ve got global warming and enough PE sitting in crates to cause a major fucking incident.”

“PE?” Oberon repeated quietly, shooting Tatiana a questioning look.

“Potential Energy,” she whispered.

Aubrey was still talking. “There’s over eighty teeth a second being harvested, and those teeth need to be processed. Do you know how much PE there is in an hour’s worth of teeth?” He paused, giving her a chance to answer. When she didn’t, he finished, “A fucking lot.”

Oberon spoke up. “We’re doing the best we can. Besides, there’s no danger. The Collectors are on strike, too.”

Aubrey interrupted in an explosion of rage. “No one’s harvesting? Are you fucking insane? Leaving PE in the human world is even worse! Do you have any fucking idea what happens if you have two pools of unstable PE separated by the veil?”

Tatiana shook her head.

“Kaboom! Both worlds. Fucking gone.”

Tatiana’s eyes widened in horror.

“How long do we have?” Oberon asked.

Aubrey did some calculations, the fingers of his right hand running over those of his left as he thought. “An hour.” he said. “If that. Now get those Collectors harvesting. Lie to them if you have to. And get the fucking Circles working.”

Tatiana nodded, feeling better now they had a plan. “How long since the strike started?”

19 responses to “Bite Me: An Uncharted Apocalypse”

Okay, you got me at FR. That was a straight right to my funny bone. Yep the old coffee spit and everything. AND it was, from there on, straight down hill to helpless laughter and I can see it erupting all day as I think of Aubry. the good old days, that deadly PE good grief the workplace today . . . I swear. Brilliant, Jo, just brilliant. Thanks for the best way I’ve started my day in a long time.

About the Author

Jo Eberhardt is a writer of speculative fiction, mother to two adorable boys, and lover of words and stories. She lives in rural Queensland, Australia, and spends her non-writing time worrying that the neighbour's cows will one day succeed in sneaking into her yard and eating everything in her vegie garden.

Join her as she blogs about reading, writing, motherhood, and living the simple life.